Tag Archives: Hope Madden

Outtakes

Baby I’m a Star

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Big Baby

by Hope Madden

Is a horror film writer’s imagination creating real life carnage? Writer/director Spider One (Little Bites) asks the question in his latest, Big Baby.

Brandon Scott is Adam, an insecure but successful horror screenwriter who opens the film by listening to two dumbasses with a podcast say his latest movie is so bad that he should kill himself.

The point is not whether the movie is bad. The point is that Adam continues to listen. Then to stew and brood, even though his girlfriend Kate (Krsy Fox) reminds him that he’s too good to be bothered by these idiots. He’s kind of being a big baby.

Cue the nightmares: a hulking brute in a crying baby mask axes Kate in half. And the only way Adam knows to deal with this nightmare…and the others…and the waking hallucinations…is to write a script about it.

Spider One takes advantage of Scott’s genuine talent to anchor a film with a lot of insights and jabs. When you write horror, people forever wonder what’s wrong with you. Big Baby digs into this, as characters in Adam’s script show up in his life begging for theirs. He can change their fate. He has the control.

It’s kind of a cross between In the Mouth of Madness and Stranger Than Fiction with the baby mask from Happy Death Day thrown in for good measure. And it’s often fun and more often compelling, again due mainly to Scott’s committed performance.

Fox turns in solid support in a part that generates the film’s real tension as Big Baby nudges toward toxic behavior and domestic abuse. Things get sloppy once the film focuses more deliberately on what it is that Adam’s writing.

Had the script’s story tied into the core story in any way, the final product could have been quite rich. Instead, we get a series of non sequitur murders. While the tension outside Adam’s script amps to a spectacular, yell-at-the-screen level, the parallel story within the script Adam’s writing squanders that energy.

The result is curiously unsatisfying. Even as Big Baby leaves room for sequels, we’ve lost interest in the tale it’s telling.

Shudder Premiere

Dead of Winter

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The Yeti

by Hope Madden

The year is 1947. The location? The Alaska Territory.  A little expedition led by oil tycoon Merriell Sunday (Corbin Bernsen) has gone missing. Sunday’s son (Eric Nelson) mounts a search party, but it wasn’t oil his old man was after. It was something hairier.

The Yeti boasts a cast full of talent, Nelson, Bernsen, Brittany Allen, Jim Cummings, and William Sadler among them. And it’s a period, practical FX creature feature! I didn’t expect Godzilla Minus One, but I was hoping maybe for something as fun and interesting as last year’s Monster Island.

It actually reminded me a little bit more of Roseanne Liang’s 2020 creature feature Shadow in the Cloud for its retro vibe and girl power attitude.

Writers/directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta buoy a soft script with their casting, and they hit a fun, hokey tone by mining the era for a newsreel vibe. The stagey sets, hard-boiled dialog, and practical FX are endearingly compelling.  The filmmakers are clearly going after a 40s B-movie feel without leaning parody, and it mainly works.

A couple of shots are beautifully lit, and every actor pulls their weight and then some.

As Sunday Jr.’s expedition hits some bloody snags and the horror of the story begins to gel, the script’s weaknesses start to really draw attention to themselves: forced backstory sharing, burdensome daddy issues, and plot holes that don’t get filled.

Naturally, like a werewolf movie, a yeti film lives and dies on creature design. Wayne Anderson’s design is solid. On occasion, the filmmakers seem unable to shoot, light, and edit the scenes for maximum impact/minimum “that’s a mask and a suit” disbelief. But the physical presence of the beast gives dimension to scenes. Plus, thank you for going practical instead of ruining the film and its throwback vibe with AI.  

In the end, a script that needed a couple more drafts keeps The Yeti from truly satisfying. It has its moments, though.

New In Theaters

We All Scream

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Ice Cream Man

by Hope Madden

With Ice Cream Man, filmmaker Eli Roth visits the underappreciated horror subgenre focused on hordes of deadly children. Wolf Rilla may have done it first with 1960’s Village of the Damned, but Roth is following more closely in the footsteps of Narciso Ibañez Serrador and his 1976 film Who Can Kill a Child?

Since the Seventies, there’ve been plenty of killer-children flicks, most famously Children of the Corn from Stephen King’s novel. But Roth finds humor in the mayhem, channeling  2015’s Cooties in particular, but with a noticeable difference.

Generally, these films represent an adult nightmare. Our victim-heroes are grown-ups faced with the impossible task of defending themselves, and occasionally a handful of untainted children, from ravenous, murdering swarms of youngsters. It’s a tough spot to be in, hence Serrador’s title.

Roth changes that up. It’s little leaguer Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) and a couple of other kids who managed who find themselves face-to-face with the Ice Cream Man’s minions. His wares change children into frenzied killing machines. Only those lactose intolerant enough not to digest the tainted snack treats remain healthy.

Roth delights in the childish carnage. Early kills are especially nasty, all of it laced with a macabre humor and ghoulish playfulness. A similar tone is one of the reasons his 2023 film Thanksgiving was such an enjoyable return to genre work.

But Ice Cream Man never hits the spot quite as well as Thanksgiving. By removing the adult victim-hero, Roth creates a children-in-peril horror that doesn’t pull on the emotions of similar fare, like It or Devil’s Backbone, because children are also the villains.

The switch also eliminates the vicarious fear and revulsion adults often harbor, sometimes deep down, for children. Cooties read like every middle school teacher’s secret fantasy. It’s also funnier and better paced without foregoing any of the blood or nastiness.

Roth can’t manage to keep the pace moving, often pausing the action when it makes the least sense. The plot, what little there is, feels like a convenient, even cliché afterthought.

Which is not to say that Ice Cream Man is all bad. For bloodthirsty horror fans, it gets nasty. There are also a handful of randomly funny moments, and others that are just offensive. More offensive are the dips into gen AI, which is particularly weak and plain ugly during the backstory. The film’s less irreverent than it thinks it is, though, and that’s its biggest weakness.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Interview with The Withering Actor Gareth Tidball

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Gareth Tidball wowed the two of us a few years back taking on the role of Stephanie in our film Obstacle Corpse. Since then, she’s gone on to star in about a dozen feature films, and even shared a scene with Tom Hardy in Havoc. In this bonus Fright Club, we’re delighted to check in with Gareth about her latest feature, The Withering.

Outtakes

Wait a Minute, Baby

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Son of Sara

by Hope Madden

It’s hard to do something new with the “pregnant with Satan’s baby” formula. There are only so many ways it can go, and you can’t hope to unseat Rosemary’s Baby. But writer/director Houston Bone and a game cast breathe weird life in this oft-told tale.

Sara (Chloe Van Landschoot) is very pregnant. Overdue, huge, and constantly vomiting, she’s ready to be done. Her devoted girlfriend Carol (Tymika Tafari) takes good care of her. Still, Sara’s definitely not entirely OK.

She runs into Troy (Garrett Hnatiuk), the pre-Carol fling and baby daddy, and feels strangely compelled to take him up on his offer of dinner. Back at his house. Out in the middle of nowhere. With his mom (Jane Moffat).

While moments of Act 1 smack of cliché —certainly that package of bloody ground chuck in the refrigerator—Bone’s script and his actors’ talent, plus Sara’s convincing pregnant state, keep you invested.

Bone gives his cast breathing room, never rushing a scene, always lingering just long enough for someone to be intriguing. That could be Hnatiuk’s awkwardly seductive dancing, Tafari’s disdainful glare, Moffat’s contemptuous sneer, or Landschoot’s childlike gesturing. The chemistry between and among the actors is top notch, and the way they inhabit their characters ensures even formulaic scenes feel unusual and fresh.

Son of Sara is not a spendy affair, but it rarely feels trapped by its budget. Bone and crew make great use of what funds they do have, and the filmmaker’s instinct for relationship-driven humor and discomfort overcome nearly every cinematic setback.

Even if a few beats buckle under familiarity, the underlying change in theme quietly upends a status quo expectation in enormously enjoyable ways. Son of Sara has an F-you quality to it that doesn’t draw attention to itself and is all the more satisfying for it. It’s fun, tightly constructed, compellingly performed horror and you’re out in under 90 minutes. What do you have to lose?

Shudder Premiere

Night, Mommy

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Nightborn

by Hope Madden

Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm (Hatching) once again explores horrific maternal themes with Nightborn. Don’t confuse it with Neil Blomkamp’s soulless AI short film. This is not that.

Bergholm’s film stumbles into a classic Finnish folktale. Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her husband Jon (Rupert Grint) move to her grandmother’s old, long vacant home deep in the forest. Gran was a bit of an eccentric. She kept old junk—tractors, machinery, wire—around the property because the creatures in the woods hated cold iron.

What a nut!

Saga and Jon settle in to reclaim the cabin from the encroaching woods and to start their family. Jon is immediately besotted with little Christian regardless of how hairy he is. Saga can’t seem to bond with him, although she does try to find her place as a mother, first by asserting that his name is Kuura.

Bergholm’s film, co-written with Hatching writing partner Ilja Rautsi, takes us deep into a post-partum nightmare. While the film is far less original than Hatching, examining maternal horror from the mother’s perspective gives the film dimension.

Haarla looks and acts the part perfectly. Bergholm and Haarla work together to bend your expectations and sympathies. There is something wrong with this child and we’re as frustrated as Saga with the way she’s dismissed as being depressed and exhausted. The next minute, we see Saga as a narcissist whose personality disorder is now on display because she can’t find love in her heart for her baby. Then, clearly Saga is just delirious and exhausted and suffering from post-partum, all issues exacerbated by society’s demand that motherhood is precious and perfect.

Nightborn weaves these likelihoods without asking us to turn against anyone. The film empathizes with Saga, even when her behavior does seem too prickly. Likewise, we’re never asked to hate Jon—a good thing because Grint is endlessly sympathetic as a man who wants desperately to be a good dad and husband.

Though Nightborn is not perfect—the creature and baby effects leave a bit to be desired—its exploration is fascinating. Never tidy, never patronizing, but not quickly forgiving, the film embraces what’s monstrous in us. It’s not the complete success of Hatching, but it’s a vivid nightmare worth your time.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Motor City, Hadestown, Her Private Hell & More

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This week, Hope & George review Her Private Hell, Hadestown: The Musical, Motor City, The Dink, Cruel Hands, and What Tomorrow Brings, PLUS News & Notes with The Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin!

Outtakes

Dill With It

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The Dink

by Hope Madden

I was cautiously optimistic about The Dink, Josh Greenbaum’s feature that pits the elegant sport of tennis against goofy good time of pickle ball. It seemed like a funny concept.

Jake Johnson plays one-time tennis phenom Dustin Boyd, also known as the Hammer because that was the name his dad (Ed Harris) gave him as a kid due to his incredible serve. But now, rolling through his 40s in his 1998 Dodge LeSabre and working at his dad’s country club as the junior tennis instructor, the Hammer’s hitting some hard times.

As luck would have it, Dad has hatched a plan to rid the club of the goofy menace that is pickle ball. Does it involve a tournament, one pickle baller vs one tennis player? Will the Hammer somehow screw up his opportunity to be that tournament tennis pro? Will he somehow find himself falling for pickle ball?

I’m not saying, but if you’ve ever seen either a sports film or a comedy, you may be able to guess. No, Sean Clements’s script doesn’t feel terribly fresh, but the sort of Dodgeball meets Caddyshack concept is immediately appealing.

Lower your expectations and you might enjoy the movie.

Johnson’s built a career on the likeable goof character, and he’s as endearingly off-putting here as anywhere. Greenbaum surrounds him with solid support. Harris, obviously, but the ensemble teems with comic talent: Mary Steenburgen, Patton Oswalt, Ben Stiller, Chris Parnell, and even more veterans in cameos.

The Dink opens on its funniest scene, of the Hammer and his sidekick bestie (Aaron Chen) regaling two unimpressed kids with tales of their instructor’s youthful glory. Both kids (Indiana Elle and Cayden Romero) are dry, droll comic gold.

Everything after that is formula broken occasionally by random comedy bits. Stiller’s doctor is preoccupied with the “stickyhoney” dating app. Oswalt’s pickle ball advocate wastes a lot of tiny paper cups. John McEnroe brings his own concessions. Nothing is laugh-out-loud funny, but all the silliness is delivered by such pros that you chuckle regardless.

The Dink doesn’t rank among the great sports comedies, surely, but you’ll crack a smile.

New In Theaters

Trip of a Lifetime

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The Odyssey

by Hope Madden & George Wolf

Christopher Nolan likes a big room.

A massive cast, incredible set designs, far flung locations, 70mm IMAX cameras, The Odyssey has it all. And why not? Homer’s story is among history’s first ever epics.

And it’s quite a tale, trailing Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he struggles to return home to Ithaca after his savvy strategy leading to the defeat of Troy. Nolan, who adapts the 2700-year-old tome, finds echoes of Oppenheimer in Odysseus’s struggle. It’s a haunting narrative choice that gives the ancient proceedings a relevance that transcends time.

Damon is magnificent, wily and honorable, humble and arrogant, and Nolan surrounds him with a jaw-dropping ensemble. Anne Hathaway is bracingly wonderful as Penelope, the wife pushing off suitors circling the throne Odysseus left empty nearly two decades ago. Tom Holland, John Leguizamo, Mia Goth, Corey Hawkins, and Robert Pattinson join Penelope in the castle, and while the entire cast is solid, Pattinson again carves out unforgettable screentime.

Out in the wild world, Charlize Theron offers a beautiful dash of melancholy as Calypso, who prods Odysseus to search his memories and tell the tale. Himesh Patel is also exceptional as Eurylochus, Odysseus’s second in command. Elliot Page delivers a heartbreaking turn as Sinon, a youngster who follows Odysseus into battle, Jon Bernthal crafts a perfectly hardened King of Sparta while Samantha Morton finds remarkable depths as the witch Circe, given her limited time on screen. With even less screentime, Lupita Nyong’o and Zendaya leave an emotional mark.

And that’s not even the full cast, each of them bringing vulnerability to scenes of remarkable staging. The Trojan horse, the ship at sea, scenes of war, of mutiny,  scenes confined to a banquet hall or strewn across the black embers of hell—this is Nolan at not just his most imaginative, but his most insightful as he finds relatable humanity inside even the grandest of moments.

He also mines new relevance from this ancient text, increasing the narrative weight with each spectacular step on the journey. Set in “a time of apparent magic,” Nolan doesn’t let us forget that the sacred bonds between people are still very fragile indeed, and breaking them can still have haunting, tragic repercussions.

The Odyssey casts such a mesmerizing spell that its three-hour runtime seems inconsequential, and the occasional lapses into more contemporary types of dialog and phrasing are rendered mere curiosities. Even those who may not be quite scholarly in Greek mythology will find a rich, rewarding story to get lost in, one that is anchored in storytelling itself as a reminder of what power the ancient art can hold.

Expect witchcraft and monsters (maybe a horror film next, Mr. Nolan?), war, brutality, political skullduggery, love and longing, revenge and regret, sacrifice, cowardice, honor and visual wonder.

The magic here is more than apparent, so don’t cheat yourself by waiting for the streaming date. The Odyssey is a true cinema experience, and a reason to seek out IMAX, 70mm, the whole fantastic shebang. This trip of a lifetime deserves nothing less.